(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the landmark Paris Agreement opens room to drive billions of dollars in investment to other economies including Brazil, according to its energy minister.
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“The US president’s denialism is fertile ground for Brazil to receive this investment and strengthen its position as a leader in the global energy transition,” Brazil’s Mines and Energy Minister, Alexandre Silveira, said in an interview in Davos Thursday.
Silveira said Latin America’s biggest economy remains committed to its efforts to consolidate the green economy, relying on multilateralism. The country aims “to move forward and not backward on the environmental agenda” during COP30, in the city of Belém, adding the US exit from the Paris Deal “may just be a political response from Trump to his electoral base.”
Brazil’s efforts in the global shift away from fossil fuels won’t stop the country from exploring its oil reserves. Silveira argued that investing in fossil-fuel expansion is compatible with the environmental agenda, as the world will still need oil for a long time and Brazil’s crude has lower emissions compared with the world’s average.
A deadlock over a drilling license for Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer Petrobras to explore a potentially oil-rich basin off the country’s northern coast illustrates the internal conflict over fossil fuels within President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration.
“We’re not ashamed to be a country that knows that oil will last for many years to come. The proof of that is President Trump’s position,” Silveira said, referring to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” policy.
Brazil’s oil and gas economy will come into sharp focus later this year when the nation hosts the COP climate talks. The previous two COP meetings were hold in oil- and gas-producing countries, raising concerns that fossil fuel deals are being made at the talks.
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